MarcDe From ARS Will Be On Tuesday's Radio Show
 

For those of you that have been living under a rock for the last 2 weeks, there's big news coming out of the ARS camp lately!

Well, tomorrow's radio show will hopefully clear a lot of your questions & concerns up as our special guest will be MarcDe from ARS!

This is one radio show you do not want to miss!

I don't want this thread to turn into a speculation/rumor fest, but if you do have questions that you want me to ask him, please post them here :)

I'll be there :)

Ask him why he can't get his employees to move to Kalamazoo. :)

Whoa, big changes at ARS
 

Well, the massive transformation we have all been expecting has started.

It looks like the GIM sites are out, and some whole new sysytem of sites are coming in.

The rewards store is "temporarily closed". I have a pile of rewards points. It sounds as tgho they will be somewhat devalued when the store re-opens may 1st.

Good luck ARS. They've sent me a lot of money over the years, but doing less well this past year. I hope they come out of this transformation strong.

I guess this is what MarcDe is going to be talking about tomorrow.

looks like i should have cashed in my reward points when i had the chance ;) i didnt hae a lot anyways and had cashed in some in febuary

I cant find anything about all this on their website so like um, if you have it, spill it! :)

Well, as i understand it, and apologies to ARS if I have this wrong, the switch to the new site system is probably happening right now.

It sounds like all existing links will be redirected, I guess to sites closest to the niche of the replaced GIM site, and stuff that doesn't fit is going to be sent to some sort of PPC pages.

The claim is that all traffic will still be processed somehow and "some" people may make even more money.

Rewards points will be stored somehow and converted to a new rewards system, I gather with a slight devalueation, from 16.5 cents per point to 15 cents a point (I am unclear on actual values).

No word yet on any new linking format, or new banners or ad tools, or what the new payout structure will actually be.

marc is talking about building new super-content sites for the future, dropping the lame backends of the GIM sites, and building ARS sites designed to retain members.

Wow, bill.

sounds like something I can really sink my teeth into... and if they build nice, sweet, fresh tours... :D

I've been on the inside of the 'ol GIM sites and they werent very good. If they were retaining members at all I would have been suprised to know that.

Sounds also like they are keeping their webmasters in mind (they always have) and taking care of everyone. Even if rewards points get devauled 2 and a half cents. I read on their rewards store page that current reward points would be calculated by multiplying by 1.5 and then its 10 cent value of that figure. so if you only had 100 points, you'd then have 150 points worth 10 cents a peice... or 15 bucks.

pretty good deal overall, I was worried there for a short period of time but now it sounds like there's nothing to worry about at all :)

I got my ARS mailer today with the announcement, and it's a doozy!

First off, the new sites look good, there is a stress on exclusive content. They are getting away from the 100 niche front ends for what appeared to be mostly generic interiors with a bit of speciality for the niche involved. Overnight they go from hundreds of sites to 10.

Payouts appear to have dropped, however there is a partnership option, and I think these sites might actually have potential to retain customers for a while.

I have to spend some more time looking into everything before I decide my opinion overall. However, I do see a TON of upcoming work to remove older ARS-GIM stuff and replace it with ARS4R stuff.

More news once it's all out there.

Alex

Holy shit.

These look to be very big changes. I'm borderline stunned.

so far, it looks like they are replacing the whole GIM lineup with 10 reality sites and a PPC search engine.

And thats about it. More sites to come in the future.

You can find out more here http://www.arsri.com/ this is the new site.

Amazing. amazing.

I am trying to figure out the phase in / phase out schedule on this stuff - how fast will the GIM stuff stop working, how long do we have to track the stuff down and replace, etc?

Same thing for the BYOT stuff - how fast will all that go away?

Anybody? Mark? :-)

Alex

Man, that is a VERY short changeover time. I am assuming that the rest of the existing Adrevenueservice stuff will stay alive for the moment, such as HSN and such?

I see work ahead.

Alex

All links will be live and working til the 8th.


...and don't forget the 10,000 sites that will go 404 as webmasters bail out :(

DD

DD, as a link site and TGP owner, I can tell you, I am NOT looking forward to this. A VERY major sponsor changes it's entire system in a 2 week window... that's pretty stunning. It means a sh*tload of work for everyone involved.

I also see many upsides: Fresh sites, fresh banners, fresh promo, fresh SE terms... the graphics on the new sites are HOT, that is for sure - 100% up to date and clean. I wouldn't call the sites groundbreaking (reality porn has been with us for a while), but the content is fresh and the look is good.

In the end it will be all good, I am sure... this middle part will be a hard go for a while.

Alex

The radio show's gonna be fun...

I have some hundreds of sites promoting 10 ars sites.
I'm glad that I have all my sponsor links in a database. Because of this I have only to change 10 links |bananna|

It's a short time for such a huge switch. But the old ARS program was crappy, only a few quality sites. And they survive.
ARS is shrinking back to a save and healthy basis.

|sad| i am crying already this will take me days to change all the links....................wehhhhhhhhh this is a majore changing.

The content is fresh but there are only 10 videos (no stills atm EDIT: There ARE promo stills) for each site.
You LL owners are going to get tired of seeing that pretty quickly.

I sure hope my icq reminder works tomorrow so I'll remember to come listen to Marc.
I also hope their members areas are finished sometime soon, especially since the sites are live. (You can get a 5 day pass to peek inside, it's in your linking codes area.)

The new plan for the BYOT system sounds like it's going to rock, though. Basically an AVS setup where other webmasters can promote your site - like ProAdult's super rev or whatever it's called option.

Carrie, I have already downloaded a boatload of pics... no problems... maybe not working for all sites, but I got some that are going into a site as I speak.

Alex

1. Why weren't the member's areas finished before the sites went live and they were the only ones we could promote?

2. How do we become an advertiser on the SearchBoXXX search engine that they're using as For Mature Audiences Only?

3. How soon before we can start grabbing content to build the new CHAMP tours and member's areas with?

4. What will the process be to get our exclusive content licensed to ARS so that we can use it with CHAMP?

5. How long will it take to get a CHAMP site approved and in the system?

6. I don't understand the new webmaster referral system at all. Please explain it in detail.

On a good note, the promo material area looks really nice and easy, the passes to access the sites and look inside are a great feature, and the videos are nice and clear (albeit SMALL).

Just as you were typing that I went in to check myself and was able to download still photos for promo... I was assuming (there's that word assume) that since there are NO still photos currently in the member's areas that there weren't any to promote with yet either.

But there are!

Hopefully the rest of the member's areas will be finished soon.
I do like the promo area - very easy to get what you're looking for.

this has to be very interesting i just can't figure out how the new plans could possibly benefit them more from their existing system ...
Like is the byot's going to consist of only the new sites ??
What about all their fetish/niche sites !!!
This is really scary i make the bulk of my sales from their BYOT micro fetish sites

i don't usually listen to most radio shows but this one is a MUST |angry| |angry|

For those of you that haven't heard about it yet, the latest release from ARS is included in today's news

Bill - remind me to kick you in the shin when I see you :D

Everyone - I didn't want this to start like it has on the board because we have MarcDe on the Radio Show tonight. My thinking is that it'd be best to hear directly from him as opposed to the many, many speculations (as well as truth's) that have been posted so far.

Get some questions together - post them here if you can't make the chat. I will archive the entire chat & post it here tomorrow morning (as well as the audio from the show)

This is one of those things where Jim & I got lucky! :) I actually asked MarcDe to be on the radio show 2 weeks ago & neither of us put together that it was the day after the major announcement. I spoke to MarcDe yesterday when the news was breaking & he's still 100% go for the show!

* Also, believe me when I say that my stress level has increased exponentially since I heard the news yesterday - while I don't have as much riding on this as ARS does, everyone knows that ARS is my #1 money producing sponsor BY FAR! I'm just waking up now & of course have to take care of the usual board stuff, but I'll be poking around ARS's sites all day today & I plan on asking MarcDe a lot of questions tonight :)

PS - if MarcDe was not going to be on the show tonight, I'd have never said anything about this thread - please don't think that I'm trying to cover anything up or something like that - just made sense to me to wait til the radio show :)